Founder’s Quote Daily

Patriot Post – “The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of its political cares.” —Alexander Hamilton (1787)

Patriot Post – “The Constitution … is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.” —Thomas Jefferson (1819)

Patriot Post – “Measures which serve to abridge the free competition of foreign Articles, have a tendency to occasion an enhancement of prices.” —Alexander Hamilton (1791)

Patriot Post – “Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.” —Samuel Adams (1775)

Patriot Post – “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.” —James Madison (1788)

Patriot Post – “There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness.” —George Washington (1793)

Patriot Post – “My construction of the constitution is very different from that you quote. It is that each department is truly independent of the others, and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the constitution in the cases submitted to its action; and especially, where it is to act ultimately and without appeal.” —Thomas Jefferson (1819)

Patriot Post – “Responsibility, in order to be reasonable, must be limited to objects within the power of the responsible party, and in order to be effectual, must relate to operations of that power, of which a ready and proper judgment can be formed by the constituents.” —James Madison (1788)

Patriot Post – “It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.” —Thomas Jefferson (1781)

Patriot Post – “The policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the Language, habits and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures and laws: in a word, soon become one people.” —George Washington (1794)

Patriot Post – “I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.” —Thomas Jefferson (1785)

Patriot Post – “There exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity.” —George Washington (1789)

Patriot Post – “The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.” —Thomas Jefferson (1775)

Patriot Post – “There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” —James Madison (1788)

Patriot Post – “The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.” —James Madison (1788)

Patriot Post – “The fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace.” —Alexander Hamilton (1788)

Patriot Post – “In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature.” —James Madison (1788)

Patriot Post – “The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted … if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.” —George Washington (1783)

Patriot Post – “As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.” —James Madison (1792)

Patriot Post – “Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.” —Benjamin Franklin (1771)

Patriot Post – “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” —James Madison (1788)

Patriot Post – “Ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm.” —James Madison (1788)

Patriot Post – “No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable.” —George Washington (1793)

Patriot Post – “Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue.” —John Witherspoon (1776)

Patriot Post – “The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epocha when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period.” —George Washington (1783)

Patriot Post – “The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epocha when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period.” —George Washington (1783)

Patriot Post – “The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” —George Washington (1789)

Patriot Post – “The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it.” —James Wilson (1790)

Patriot Post – “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” —Thomas Jefferson (1801)

Patriot Post – “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” —Thomas Jefferson (1820)

Patriot Post – “Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.” —Alexander Hamilton (1788)

Patriot Post – “Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be.” —John Adams (1826)

Patriot Post – “War is not the best engine for us to resort to; nature has given us one in our commerce, which if properly managed, will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice.” —Thomas Jefferson (1797)

Patriot Post – “How much more do they deserve our reverence and praise, whose lives are devoted to the formation of institutions, which, when they and their children are mingled in the common dust, may continue to cherish the principles and the practice of liberty in perpetual freshness and vigour.” —Joseph Story (1833)

Patriot Post – “The ingredients which constitute energy in the Executive are, first, unity; secondly, duration; thirdly, an adequate provision for its support; fourthly, competent powers.” —Alexander Hamilton (1788)

Patriot Post – “The consciousness of having discharged that duty which we owe to our country is superior to all other considerations.” —George Washington (1788)

Patriot Post – “Foreign influence is truly the Grecian horse to a republic. We cannot be too careful to exclude its influence.” —Alexander Hamilton (1793)

Patriot Post – “There is no maxim in my opinion which is more liable to be misapplied, and which therefore needs elucidation than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.” —James Madison (1786)

Patriot Post – “I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” —Thomas Jefferson (1824)

Patriot Post – “May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us in all our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy.” —George Washington (1790)

Patriot Post – “Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.” —Thomas Jefferson (1821)

Patriot Post – “It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.” —John Adams (1756)

Patriot Post  “The instrument by which it [government] must act are either the AUTHORITY of the laws or FORCE. If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted; and where this becomes the ordinary instrument of government there is an end to liberty!” —Alexander Hamilton (1794)

Patriot Post – “Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths…?” —George Washington (1796)

Patriot Post – “The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.” —George Washington (1783)

Patriot Post – “All men are equally bound by the laws of nature, or to speak more properly, the laws of the Creator.” —Samuel Adams (1794)

Patriot Post – “He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual.” —Thomas Jefferson (1785)

Patriot Post – “The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all citizens.” —Thomas Jefferson (1816)

Patriot Post – “War is not the best engine for us to resort to; nature has given us one in our commerce, which if properly managed, will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice.” —Thomas Jefferson (1797)

Patriot Post – “The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counselors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.” —Thomas Jefferson (1775)

Patriot Post – “The importance of piety and religion; of industry and frugality; of prudence, economy, regularity and an even government; all … are essential to the well-being of a family.” —Samuel Adams (1780)

Patriot Post – “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” —Thomas Jefferson (1798)

Patriot Post – “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” —Thomas Jefferson (1798)

Patriot Post – “National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman.” —John Adams (1815)

Patriot Post – “Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the Spirit of Party generally. … A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.” —George Washington (1796)

Patriot Post – “The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union.” —Thomas Jefferson (1823)

Patriot Post – “During the course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been levelled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety.” —Thomas Jefferson (1805)

Patriot Post – “To prevent crimes, is the noblest end and aim of criminal jurisprudence. To punish them, is one of the means necessary for the accomplishment of this noble end and aim.” —James Wilson (1790)

Patriot Post – “Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.” —Thomas Jefferson (1824)

Patriot Post – “Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.” —George Washington (1748)

Patriot Post – “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.” —Patrick Henry (1788)

Patriot Post – “As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.” —James Madison (1788)

Patriot Post – “It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government.” —Mercy Warren (1805)

Patriot Post – “It will not be doubted, that with reference either to individual, or National Welfare, Agriculture is of primary importance. In proportion as Nations advance in population, and other circumstances of maturity, this truth becomes more apparent; and renders the cultivation of the Soil more and more, an object of public patronage.” —George Washington (1796)

Patriot Post – “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.” —Thomas Jefferson (1791)

Patriot Post – “Good constitutions are formed upon a comparison of the liberty of the individual with the strength of government: If the tone of either be too high, the other will be weakened too much. It is the happiest possible mode of conciliating these objects, to institute one branch peculiarly endowed with sensibility, another with knowledge and firmness.” —Alexander Hamilton (1788)

Patriot Post – “The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is ingulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them.” —Thomas Jefferson (1821)

Patriot Post – “The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is ingulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them.” —Thomas Jefferson (1821)

Patriot Post – “Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.” —Samuel Adams (1749)

Patriot Post – “The principle of the Constitution is that of a separation of legislative, Executive and Judiciary functions, except in cases specified. If this principle be not expressed in direct terms, it is clearly the spirit of the Constitution, and it ought to be so commented and acted on by every friend of free government.” —Thomas Jefferson (1797)

Patriot Post – “I am commonly opposed to those who modestly assume the rank of champions of liberty, and make a very patriotic noise about the people. It is the stale artifice which has duped the world a thousand times, and yet, though detected, it is still successful.” —Fisher Ames (1789)

Patriot Post – “To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.” —Alexander Hamilton (1788)

Patriot Post – “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” —Thomas Jefferson (1774)

Patriot Post – “Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.” —George Washington (1753)

Patriot Post – “It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it. After discriminating, therefore, in theory, the several classes of power, as they may in their nature be legislative, executive, or judiciary, the next and most difficult task is to provide some practical security for each, against the invasion of the others.” —James Madison (1788)

Patriot Post – “In reality there is perhaps no one of our natural Passions so hard to subdue as Pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will now and then peek out and show itself.” —Benjamin Franklin (1771)

Patriot Post – “The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.” —Thomas Jefferson (1821)

Patriot Post – “Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free Government.” —George Washington (1796)

Patriot Post – “The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms and false reasonings is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges. You would be convinced, that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, and that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice.” —Alexander Hamilton (1775)

Patriot Post – “If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?” —Benjamin Franklin

Patriot Post – “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” —Benjamin Franklin (1776)

Patriot Post – “Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.” —Thomas Jefferson (1823)

Patriot Post – “[The president] is the dignified, but accountable magistrate of a free and great people. The tenure of his office, it is true, is […]

Patriot Post – “Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.” —Thomas Jefferson (1781)

Patriot Post – “A rigid economy of the public contributions and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive.” —Thomas Jefferson (1823)

Patriot Post – “The eyes of the world being thus on our Country, it is put the more on its good behavior, and under the greater obligation also, to do justice to the Tree of Liberty by an exhibition of the fine fruits we gather from it.” —James Madison (1824)

Patriot Post – “There! His Majesty can now read my name without glasses. And he can double the reward on my head!” —John Hancock upon signing the Declaration of Independence (1776)

Patriot Post – “When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground.” —Thomas Jefferson (1805)

Patriot Post – “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.” —Patrick Henry (1788)

Patriot Post – “The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.” —James Madison (1829)

Patriot Post – “Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. And never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you.” —Thomas Jefferson (1785)

Patriot Post – “It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” —Alexander Hamilton (1787)

Patriot Post – “Love your neighbor as yourself and your country more than yourself.” —Thomas Jefferson (1825)

Patriot Post – “The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all citizens.” —Thomas Jefferson (1816)

Patriot Post – “A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government.” —Thomas Jefferson (1820)

Patriot Post – “This balance between the National and State governments ought to be dwelt on with peculiar attention, as it is of the utmost importance. It forms a double security to the people. If one encroaches on their rights they will find a powerful protection in the other. Indeed, they will both be prevented from overpassing their constitutional limits by a certain rivalship, which will ever subsist between them.” —Alexander Hamilton (1788)

Patriot Post – “All see, and most admire, the glare which hovers round the external trappings of elevated office. To me there is nothing in it, beyond the lustre which may be reflected from its connection with a power of promoting human felicity.” —George Washington (1790)

Patriot Post – “The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism.” —George Washington (1796)

Patriot Post – “It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn.” —George Washington (1789)

Patriot Post – “It appears to me, then, little short of a miracle, that the Delegates from so many different States … should unite in forming a system of national Government, so little liable to well founded objections.” —George Washington (1788)

Patriot Post – “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” —James Madison (1788)

Patriot Post – “In the formation of our constitution the wisdom of all ages is collected — the legislators are antiquity are consulted, as well as the opinions and interests of the millions who are concerned. It short, it is an empire of reason.” —Noah Webster (1787)

Patriot Post – “Nothing is so contagious as opinion, especially on questions which, being susceptible of very different glosses, beget in the mind a distrust of itself.” —James Madison (1790)

Patriot Post – “Every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country, every man who loves liberty ought to have it ever before his eyes that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the Union of America and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it.” —James Madison (1788)

Patriot Post – “To render the justice of the war on our part the more conspicuous, the reluctance to commence it was followed by the earliest and strongest manifestations of a disposition to arrest its progress. The sword was scarcely out of the scabbard before the enemy was apprised of the reasonable terms on which it would be resheathed.” —James Madison (1813)

Patriot Post – “The general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws: its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any.” —James Madison (1787)

Patriot Post – “Foreign influence is truly the Grecian horse to a republic. We cannot be too careful to exclude its influence.” —Alexander Hamilton (1793)

Patriot Post – “The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty.” —Fisher Ames (1788)

Patriot Post – “From the practice of the purest virtue, you may be assured you will derive the most sublime comforts in every moment of life, and in the moment of death.” —Thomas Jefferson (1785)

Patriot Post – “It is a principle incorporated into the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute.” —James Madison (1816)

Patriot Post – “The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations.” —George Washington (1778)

Patriot Post – “There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.” —George Washington (1795)

Patriot Post – “There is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust.” —James Madison (1788)

Patriot Post – “We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.” —Thomas Jefferson (1816)

Patriot Post – “Government is instituted to protect property of every sort.” —James Madison (1792)

Patriot Post – “The Constitution … is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.” —Thomas Jefferson (1819)

Patriot Post – “Newspapers … serve as chimnies to carry off noxious vapors and smoke.” —Thomas Jefferson (1802)

Patriot Post – “It has been a source of great pain to me to have met with so many among [my] opponents who had not the liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition; who transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his political opinions.” —Thomas Jefferson (1808)

Patriot Post – “The great leading objects of the federal government … are to maintain domestic peace, and provide for the common defense.” —Alexander Hamilton (1788)